Seven Years Later
by dpluver
Summary: Now fourteen years old, Danny's curious about his parents' ghost portal and even ghosts in general. He had met one once, all those years ago. But Danny Phantom had not yet returned like he promised he would…is that about to change? Sequel to "Going Home"


**Got a great response on "Going Home." So this is the "sequel" though it's younger Danny's sequel. I'm leaving older Danny's future up to the readers' interpretation. Good news, however: this one is less sad than the original. I'd recommend reading "Going Home" first, as this won't make much sense without having read that first ;)**

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><p>Fourteen year old Danny Fenton was one of the most ordinary teenagers in Amity Park. Besides the crazed ghost hunting parents- who had <em>yet<em> to even capture a single ghost- overbearing genius sister, and awkwardly-adorned home (a few years back, his father had built a massive "Fenton Works" sign to remind the world where the Fenton family lived), he was no different than any other teenager.

He was an average student with average looks and average friends. Nothing about him really stood out when compared to the rest of his peers, and the vast majority of his life had consisted of the usual school, sleep, and social life routine. If asked what were the most memorable events in his lifetime, he would only be able to name two: the Christmas disaster- after which he began his annual grudge against the holiday season- and the day he first saw a ghost. A _real_ ghost.

The ghost's name had been Danny Phantom.

Danny himself had just been seven years old when the white haired ghost with striking green eyes appeared at his window, and although his time with the spectral figure had been limited, it left a deep impression on the young Fenton.

That had been the day he discovered flying. Oh, what a joy that had been.

At the time, Danny had been terrified that his parents would find out and hurt the older ghost, but the temptation of defying gravity with the seemingly friendly ghost who shared his name had outweighed Danny's worries about his parents.

It had been magnificent. More exciting than the then seven year-old's vocabulary could possibly express at the time.

Afterwards, however, Danny Phantom informed him that he had to leave. He did not give an explanation, and to this day, Danny still wondered why and where the ghost had gone. He had so many questions for him, especially after he discovered that his parents were building some sort of "ghost portal." Danny couldn't remember why this was important, but his intuition was telling him that it was somehow linked to Danny Phantom.

"We should check it out!" Sam and Tucker had excitedly proclaimed the moment he informed them about his parents' latest invention.

"I'm not sure," Danny replied hesitantly. He had seen the inside of it and it looked creepy. He was pretty sure it wouldn't work, but then again, he used to believe that ghosts didn't exist, too. Ever since that day, he had learned to always challenge his assumptions, because oftentimes he found himself mistaken.

And even though the intricate details of the that day had since faded more or less, Danny still held onto the ghost's promise, _"You'll see me again in a few years._"

It had been nearly seven years and Danny Phantom was yet to return. Danny felt a little betrayed by the older ghost. He had trusted him to follow through on that promise, and so far, it seemed as though he had been lying to placate the saddened younger Danny.

Maybe he had been trapped in the "Ghost Zone" or whatever his parents had called it. Some sort of other dimension in which the recently completed Fenton portal was supposed to lead to. But the portal was a bust, as the power cords that were supposed to spark the enormous thing to life merely fizzled out when his dad connected them together.

Figuring there was no harm in just checking it out, Danny and his friends waited for an afternoon where everyone in the family was out doing something, leaving the basement open to exploration. Danny was initially quite nervous, as he had been down here on very few occasions and preferred not to walk into a lair full of unpredictable weapons and failed experimentations.

Meanwhile, Sam and Tucker seemed to be positively enthralled. Tucker was in the corner, obsessing over some in-progress tech projects, while Sam was examining the portal.

"Impressive," she commented, stroking the smooth metal sides on the outer ring.

"It's all for show, it doesn't actually work," Danny pointed out. "Pretty much like everything else in here. I mean really, a thermos? What the heck is this supposed to do? Start up a soup kitchen for ghosts?"

"Well, it's not like ghosts _actually_ exist," Tucker said, walking over to join his friends.

Danny bit his lip. Sam noticed this and immediately frowned. "Danny, I thought you told us the whole 'Danny Phantom' thing was just a dream."

"I guess," Danny shrugged, still unable to fully answer the question himself: had the whole Danny Phantom thing just been one crazy dream? Could it be that ghosts really didn't exist after all?

Sam didn't look convinced, but she was also bored, so she grabbed a nearby black and white hazmat suit and tossed it to Danny. "Here, try it on."

Danny frowned. "Why?"

Sam smiled and held up a camera. "You're the son of ghost hunters. The least you can do is pretend you know a thing or two about ghosts."

Figuring they had nothing more interesting to do, Danny slipped into the suit. The black boots and gloves over the white suit had a very cool look to them, but the sticker of his dad's face plastered onto the chest ruined whatever coolness it had.

"No way, I am _not_ getting any pictures with _that_ on your chest," Sam admonished him before swiping the sticker from his suit. "There. Much better."

She snapped a few pictures, then had a new flash of inspiration. "Why don't you go stand in the portal and pretend you're in the Ghost Zone!"

Danny's eyebrows rose cautiously. "Why?"

Sam rolled her eyes and gave him a light push. "The lighting is much creepier in there. Great photo op. Plus, it's not like it works, so what do you have to worry about?"

Danny shrugged and took a step inside. The small metal foyer echoed lightly at the sound of his entrance, and the inner wirings that lined the thing glowed faintly. Danny felt his heart pick up the pace as he ventured further inside. Something about this portal was a little too eerie for comfort.

"Where do you want me?" Danny called back to Sam. He brushed his left hand against the wall for security, as it was starting to get a little darker in there.

Without warning, his left hand swiped over a button, pushing it in far enough to activate the wiring in the portal. Everything around him began sizzling with electricity, and the shocks came before he could even think of escaping. Danny screamed as the volts surged throughout his entire body, and the white lights were blinding him so badly that it no longer mattered whether his eyes were opened or closed; all he could see was blackness.

Off to the side, he hear Sam screaming, even over the sound of the supercharged electrical blasts going off all around him. Although his body felt numb from the pain, something in his mind urged him to find an exit. Ignoring the boiling-blood feeling reverberating throughout his body, Danny haphazardly staggered towards where he thought the exit of the portal might be. It felt like he was running a mile instead of walking a couple of steps, but eventually he landed on the cool, tiled surface of the lab.

The shocking sensation ceased, but Danny's ears were still ringing and his vision refused to clear. For several minutes or possibly even hours, Danny just laid there. His entire body was aching, and he was drifting in and out of consciousness every few minutes. Somewhere in the realm of consciousness, he could hear his friends' desperate pleas for him to come to his senses, but his mind wouldn't respond just yet.

All he seemed to be capable of doing was groaning in pain. Slowly but surely, he was regaining his sense of sight and hearing, but everything was fuzzy.

When his vision finally cleared, he saw Sam and Tucker sitting anxiously on either side of him. For some reason, they looked beyond horrified, but Danny wrote that off as just shock from seeing their friend basically get electrocuted in front of them.

"What was that?" he asked groggily. Neither Sam nor Tucker responded, however their mouths remained open and their eyes, unblinking.

"What's wrong, guys?"

Sam looked like she was trying to say something, but whatever words were on her lips died before she could say them.

"Sam?" Danny was starting to feel a little concerned. Why were his friends staring at him like this? Was he bleeding?

Danny looked down at his chest. It took a few seconds to register that his once white suit had inverted into black. That was unexpected. Trying to process this information, Danny held up one of his hands. The once black glove was now white. And was it…glowing?

"Move," he said to Sam and Tucker, unable to think clearly enough to say more than one or two words at a time. With a great amount of effort, he pushed himself off of the ground and stumbled over to a nearby mirror.

The person that met him there startled him so badly that he tripped and fell over onto his back. It couldn't be. There was _no way_. This had to be a dream…

Tucker and Sam helped him to his feet, and Danny had another face off with the mirror. His eyes had no been deceiving him: he had glowing white hair, bright green eyes, and a black and white suit in the inverted form it had been in when he first entered the portal earlier.

"I can't believe it," he whispered, unable to come up with a rational explanation for this. It defied every ounce of logic left in his universe.

"What?" Sam asked, her voice a few pitches too high.

Danny stared into the mirror for several more seconds, trying to assure himself that he wasn't just going crazy and imagining things. But he could never forget that mental picture...the one of the first ghost he had ever met...

He slowly turned around to face his friends. They looked utterly baffled, but they could not be more confused than Danny was feeling right now. It made absolutely _no_ sense at all.

"I'm him," was all Danny could say.

Sam and Tucker blinked, as though waiting for an explanation.

Not quite believing the words coming out of his mouth, Danny spoke again, "Guys. I'm him. _I'm _Danny Phantom."

His friends looked highly dubious of this but didn't say so. There was no questioning it, however. With the exception of the DP emblem, Danny looked exactly like the ghost from all those years ago. But the troubling thing was: if that had been him, how in the world had it visited him as a kid? It was the most puzzling problem he had ever encountered, and any explanation his mind could come up with was immediately shot down. It wasn't like time travel actually existed, right?

Danny looked back in the mirror again. The other Danny's words suddenly returned to him.

"_I can't stay, but this doesn't mean I'm gone forever. I'll come back…and you'll get to fly again. Whenever you want."_

"Whenever I want," Danny whispered to himself later that night when he was alone in his room. Tucker and Sam, after spending hours fussing over him, had finally gone home and now he was sitting in the dark, contemplating over the day's events.

He looked out the window where he had first met Danny Phantom. He had promised to return, and in a way that still made absolutely zero sense to Danny, the Phantom had, in fact, returned.

Danny numbly got out of bed and walked over to the window. Before reaching it, however, a fluttering piece of paper on his desk caught his attention. It was pinned down by what appeared to be a Fenton thermos…but hadn't he last seen that in the lab? How had it gotten up here?

He unfolded the note and read it.

_Use them wisely._

Simple enough. But there was truly no end to the day's surprises, as Danny recognized this as _his_ own writing. Given that he had some of the strangest handwriting known to mankind, he highly doubted this was the work of a forger. But it only added to his confusion, as he could not for the life of him remember when he wrote it. If he wrote it.

Making his way over to the window, he stared out at the night sky like he had for the past several years in which he had been waiting for Phantom to return to make good on his promise of unrestricted flying.

He shivered slightly as he opened the window and peered down at the ground. That was a pretty far drop. But he wasn't just Danny Fenton. Not anymore. By some crazy accident, he was now Danny Phantom as well. He didn't know where the older Phantom was, or how he had come to visit his younger self in the first place, but right now that didn't matter.

Danny closed his eyes as he stepped onto the windowsill, preparing to jump. For any normal human, this would have led to disastrous results. But for Danny, he was about to take back something he thought he would never enjoy again.

Smiling to himself as he took in a deep breath of the cool evening air, Danny jumped. Instead of falling, however, he flew upwards. Like a weightless leaf blowing in the wind. Contradicting every law of gravity in existence.

After seven years, Danny Phantom had finally fulfilled his promise, albeit in a much more different way than Danny had been expecting since their first encounter. He did not know how he could have met someone that was really himself in a different form, but up here, in the sky, the complexities of this situation weren't important. Danny Fenton had discovered a whole new perspective in life, and whether these ghost powers were permanent or just temporary, he was prepared to make the most of it for as long as he could.

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><p><strong>Hope you guys liked it. Any comments or constructive criticism would be much appreciated :)<strong>


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